43. From the desk of James Randi (Podcast)

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I know that if Ian's android was ever constructed, I would have to seriously consider accepting the physicalist view again - I wonder what would push you over into a dualist/idealist position?

Probably nothing, because I think all monisms are equivalent. But I suppose that if you could find me a disembodied mind that I could not localize in space/time in order to study it, that would be interesting.

Do you at least see why Larry Boy feels it is intuitively obvious that mental stuff is not merely physical?

You don't want me to answer that question. I think Larry feels that it is intuitively obvious because he gives too much credence to his intuition. Of course things going on inside your head are going to seem different from everything else, because everything else is not going on inside your head.

The committed idealist should have the exact opposite problem: How can it possibly be that there exist things that are not going on inside his head?

Plotting where all sorts of mental events happen within the brain can give a misleading impression of understanding. It is worth bearing in mind that:

Neural plasticity would seem to mean that a lot of the locations where things happen in the brain are provisional - movable if necessary.

Knowing what goes on where does not tell you anything about how it happens.

Well, it tells you something, but I agree it's only a small part of the story.

You always berate others for not having a theory of consciousness - but you don't have one either - nobody does!

But I do have a theory: I think our inner experiences are due to brain function. The alternate theory is that our inner experiences are not due to brain function. Now which of those theories is likely to progress more in the coming years?

All you do, (IMHO) is pretend that consciousness is something else, akin to a computation, and try to explain that instead! A physical theory can't begin to explain something that is fundamentally different from the various entities that exist in that theory. The problem is that you can't explain the tiniest bit of consciousness from physical theory - the two just don't connect anywhere - but this has happened repeatedly in science - each time a new theory with new elements has come to the rescue - why are you so sure this will not happen again?

I'm not sure it won't happen again. But I'm pretty sure it'll be a scientific theory right smack in the middle of good old scientific physicalism. And I'm also quite sure that the idealism mongers will still say that it doesn't explain consciousness because the two just don't connect anywhere.

It is difficult to imagine is that your inner experiences are the result of physical processes. The question is whether one leaps from this failure of imagination to the assumption that it simply can't be. The interesting thing here is that if you insist that consciousness is different from everything else, then even if science does come to understand consciousness as brain function, you will refuse to call it anything other than the neural correlates of consciousness. You will truly have invented something that does not exist. It will be like insisting that the moving car is only the mechanical correlate of motion.

~~ Paul

[Larry Boy]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Perhaps, but the ideas are still being tested. What do you think thousands of neurophysiologists are doing?

I think they're testing various ideas, as you say. I just don't see how this vindicates materialism.

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Sorry, me no get.

In physics there is no reason "now" should be "now", and not 10 years ago, or 100 years in the future; nor for that matter, that time should flow forwards and not backwards!

In short, time - or rather the fact that we experience a "now" - is a strange anomaly in physics. "Now" could just as well be 2 years ago or one billion years in the future.

Now, why is it really that we feel that we're in 2008 now and not, say, 2011 or 2005? Physics has no answer. But think about it, isn't it consciousness that causes us to feel that we're here now? For a materialist, it should be a strange conclusion that something that's supposed to equal the brain - a thing that is indifferent as to whether it's 2008, 2007 or 2009 - should somehow "decide" that now is 2008!

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Larry

I think they're testing various ideas, as you say. I just don't see how this vindicates materialism.

I didn't say that it did. I said that physicalist ideas are being tested.

In physics there is no reason "now" should be "now", and not 10 years ago, or 100 years in the future; nor for that matter, that time should flow forwards and not backwards!

Then why are physicists trying to figure out why time flows forward?

Now, why is it really that we feel that we're in 2008 now and not, say, 2011 or 2005? Physics has no answer. But think about it, isn't it consciousness that causes us to feel that we're here now? For a materialist, it should be a strange conclusion that something that's supposed to equal the brain - a thing that is indifferent as to whether it's 2008, 2007 or 2009 - should somehow "decide" that now is 2008!

I think you've gone off the deep end with this "there is no now" thing. Even if consciousness is brain function, why would I think it was any time other than now? Would there be some evolutionary advantage to thinking that it is last Tuesday?

~~ Paul

[Larry Boy]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

I think you've gone off the deep end with this "there is no now" thing.

Louis de Broglie, Nobel Laureate in physics 1929:*

Each observer, as his time passes, discovers, so to speak, new slices of space-time which appear to him as successive aspects of the material world, though in reality the ensemble of events constituting space-time exist prior to his knowledge of them . . . the aggregate of past, present and future phenomena are in some sense given a priori.

Physicist Russell Stannard:*

Physics itself recognizes no special moment called ‘now’ — the moment that acts as the focus of ‘becoming’ and divides the ‘past’ from the ‘future’. In four-dimensional space-time nothing changes, there is no flow of time, everything simply is . . . It is only in consciousness that we come across the particular time known as ‘now’ . . . It is only in the context of mental time that it makes sense to say that all of physical space-time is. One might even go so far as to say that it is unfortunate that such dissimilar entities as physical time and mental time should carry the same name! (My underlining.)

Physicist Sir Roger Penrose:* . . . particles do not even move, being represented by “static” curves drawn in space–time.

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Even if consciousness is brain function, why would I think it was any time other than now?

You're missing the point. I've never said that you should think it is any other time than now. What I'm saying is that it doesn't make sense that consciousness equals brain states if the brain is spread out in space-time like frames of a film, whereas consciousness is focusing in on one frame at a time.

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Would there be some evolutionary advantage to thinking that it is last Tuesday?

Red herring.

* Quoted in Smythies (2003): http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/smythies.pdf

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

But I do have a theory: I think our inner experiences are due to brain function. The alternate theory is that our inner experiences are not due to brain function. Now which of those theories is likely to progress more in the coming years?

~~ Paul

Come on - you can do better than that! Everyone here has a shallow theory like that!

The alternative that you pose is also vacuous. The TV receiver analogy may not be perfect, but it does not reduce to your alternative. There are many subtle variants available as well.

The thing that gets me about papers such as the "Multiple drafts model", is that they don't read like normal scientific papers at all - more like religious essays! They seem more about trying to persuade the reader of a point of view based on the minimum of evidence, rather than providing a real model of consciousness.

What I find distasteful, is not so much that vague, untestable theories of consciousness are proposed, but that these are touted as if they were self-evident truths, and any observations that don't fit - such as Ψ - are discarded as a result.

Ian thinks it would be feasible to create an android that would behave in a human way, but not be conscious - not experience qualia. I am beginning to think that maybe all our thoughts are about qualia. Traditionally we think of the colour red as an example of a qualia, but if, for example, you think about solving an integral, don't you have a qualia for an integral? The way they are typeset must be a pain for technical book publishers, but most people would object strongly to a more 'rational' notation. Even ideas without a special symbol, seem to have a place in the mind that is very qualia-like. Also, some of the most productive individuals - such as Ramanujan - seem to have had totally strange ways of thinking, utterly remote from the data sifting ideas that seem to derive from the ultimate abstraction of 'rational' thought.

David

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Larry

You're missing the point. I've never said that you should think it is any other time than now. What I'm saying is that it doesn't make sense that consciousness equals brain states if the brain is spread out in space-time like frames of a film, whereas consciousness is focusing in on one frame at a time.

Something creates a flow in space-time. There is no reason that can't be a physical thing, perhaps the expansion of space, thermodynamics, or causality. You're suggesting that it's consciousness. We shall see.

It's possible, of course, that the future does not actually exist yet.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by David

Come on - you can do better than that! Everyone here has a shallow theory like that!

No, many people have the theory "Consciousness is not brain function." Unfortunately, it's difficult to study a "not something."

~~ Paul

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by Larry Boy

What's the point? There's no scientific theory of consciousness, either. Still there's a lot more research going on about the brain than about psi. And we all know consciousness exists (most of us, anyway). Not being able to put forth a theory doesn't mean a phenomenon doesn't exist.

I'm interested in why some people are so sure that a particular phenomenon exists when the alleged effect is barely (if at all) discernible from chance and there is no body of science to predict its existence.

Neuroscience like other sciences makes steady progress by building upon prior research. Neuroscientists aren't still fumbling around trying to demonstrate the existence of the brain.

The strength of peoples belief in "psi" is totally out of proportion to any evidence. This doesn't mean that "psi" doesn't exist but it does suggest that wishful thinking is a much better explanation for the alleged phenomema than anything paranormal.

[Larry Boy]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Something creates a flow in space-time. There is no reason that can't be a physical thing, perhaps the expansion of space, thermodynamics, or causality.

I have to disagree. The problem is that all physical things already exist in all their possible states, at all times (it is confusing to use the term "time" here). This is what relativity is all about. Let me repeat the Penrose quote: ‘. . . particles do not even move, being represented by “static” curves drawn in space–time.’
There is, in other words, a fundamental difference between matter and mind, and that is that whereas consciousness is dynamic, matter is static in the sense that all possible states are spread out evenly in space-time.

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

It's possible, of course, that the future does not actually exist yet.

According to relativity theory, it does. It's just that we can't see it yet. Smythies puts it thus:

[T]he buildings of imperial Rome still stand — it is just that we cannot see them any more. The buildings of future cities already exist—but we cannot see them yet. (http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/smythies.pdf)

And once again, Louis de Broglie, one of the greatest physicists of the twentieth century:

Each observer, as his time passes, discovers, so to speak, new slices of space-time which appear to him as successive aspects of the material world, though in reality the ensemble of events constituting space-time exist prior to his knowledge of them . . . the aggregate of past, present and future phenomena are in some sense given a priori.

[Larry Boy]

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

I'm interested in why some people are so sure that a particular phenomenon exists when the alleged effect is barely (if at all) discernible from chance...

The Ganzfeld studies that used the original protocol, but with improved controls (auto-ganzfeld) showed a hit rate of around 33%, when chance was 25%. Wiseman and Milton's meta-analysis showing near-chance results included a lot of studies experimenting with new targets (such as music instead of pictures), and it was these that produced chance results, thereby lowering the average in the meta-analysis.

Now, since when is a hit rate of 33% "barely (if at all) discernible from chance" when chance is 25%?

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

...and there is no body of science to predict its existence.

There were no huge bodies of science to predict quantum mechanics or relativity theory, either. There were just some tiny little anomalies, which most scientists seemed to think were going to be accounted for by small revisions in current theory. If you like, you can see psi as an anomaly in today's theoretical paradigm.

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

Neuroscience like other sciences makes steady progress by building upon prior research. Neuroscientists aren't still fumbling around trying to demonstrate the existence of the brain.

Red herring. Neuroscience has come a much longer way than parapsychology, but that doesn't mean that at some time, it too was struggling with proving certain basic phenomena. Now you may argue that parapsychology has had more than a hundred years to do it, but remember that was also roughly the case for subliminal perception. It wasn't established conclusively until the 70's or the 80's I think, although research had been going on since the end of the 19th century.

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

The strength of peoples belief in "psi" is totally out of proportion to any evidence.

That's just your opinion, based on your interpretation of the evidence.

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

This doesn't mean that "psi" doesn't exist but it does suggest that wishful thinking is a much better explanation for the alleged phenomema than anything paranormal.

Why? The Ganzfeld studies, replicated at more than a dozen laboratories around the world, have shown highly promising, if not conclusive, results. In what way is "wishful thinking" a scientifically valid falsification of this evidence? Have you done a meta-analysis of the studies, showing that "wishful thinking" is a major contributing factor in producing the results?